Following the success of his first solo album ‘Faith’, he said: “If I’m really honest, something, somebody, some entity wasn’t ready to let me have a full life.

“I still had to make more records, I still had to find the next creative step – it was as though it was a choice, it was: Do you find your place in life, your place with a partner/lover or do you just carry on down this road to the next great achievement?

“I made the choice eventually for the former. On an emotional level, it was a choice between one or the other.”

He also admitted that he kept his sexuality a secret for years because there was so much paranoia around AIDS in the 1980s.

“I just wasn’t ready to come out. It was in the era of AIDS and I had no concerns about coming out for that reason, other than my family,” Michael said.

The singer continued: “I come from a very close-knit family, when my mother was alive – God bless her – she would have immediately assumed the same paranoias that I did as a gay man about AIDS in the mid-80s.

“It was not a good time, not a good time for the gay community. So for my mother’s sake and my sister’s sake, I didn’t want them to look at my life as a dangerous place, you know?”

Michael’s sexuality was eventually revealed when he was arrested for “engaging in a lewd act” in a public toilet of the Will Rogers Memorial Park, in Beverly Hills in 1998.